Germaine Guèvremont

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Germaine Guèvremont 1946

Germaine Guèvremont (born April 16, 1893 in Saint-Jérôme as Germaine Grignon , †  August 21, 1968 in Terrebonne ) was a Canadian writer . Her novels Le Survenant (1945) and Marie-Didace (1947) are considered the best and last representatives of the roman du terroir .

Life and work

She was born as Germaine Grignon, daughter of the lawyer Joseph-Jérôme Grignon and the painter Valentine Labelle. At a young age she began to write poems under the pseudonym Nature . After training at Sainte-Scholastique , Saint-Jérôme, Lachine and Toronto , she worked at the Sainte-Scholastique court. During this time she began to write for women's magazines.

In 1916 she married Hyacinthe Guèvremont, a civil servant and professional ice hockey player ( Montreal Canadiens ). In 1920 the Guèvremonts settled in Sorel and raised five children.
When one of her children died in 1926, Guèvremont returned to work after a ten-year hiatus to tackle her depression . She wrote for The Gazette , Paysana and L'Oeil , and became editor- in- chief at Le Courrier de Sorel . In 1935 Guèvremont moved to Montréal with her family . There she worked as a stenographer at the court and continued to write for magazines. Her first book, En pleine terre , appeared in 1942 , a collection of short stories that had previously been published individually in Paysana .

In 1945 she published Le Survenant . This novel and its sequel Marie-Didace (1947) were great hits with audiences. They have also received multiple awards and critics rated them as the highlight of the roman du terroir . In addition, they are retrospectively considered to be the last important representatives of this Québec genre. In the two novels, however, there are already different aspects, such as the decline of rural life during the Great Depression . In addition, the representation of women allows for pre- feminist readings. The radio play that Guèvremont developed from the novel in 1950 was broadcast on CBC / Radio-Canada from 1952 to 1955 . 1954 to 1959 followed with the trilogy Le Survenant (1954-1957), Au Chenal du Moine (1957-1958) and Marie-Didace (1958-1959) a television series based on the two novels with 138 episodes. In 1957, Le Survenant was turned into a feature film, followed by a remake by Érik Canuel in 2005 . For The Outlander , the English translation of Le Survenant and Marie-Didace , Guèvremont was awarded the Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit in 1950.

In 1962 Guèvremont was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada . After the death of her husband (1964) she wrote the screenplay for L'Adieu aux îles and began her autobiography Le Premier Miel . While she was working on it, Guèvremont died in 1968.

Works (selection)

Novels and short stories
  • En pleine terre (1938)
  • Tu seras journalist (1939)
  • En pleine terre. Paysanneries, trois contes. (1942)
  • Le Survenant (1945)
  • Marie-Didace (1947)
Screenplay and radio play
  • Le Survenant (1950)
  • L'Adieu aux îles (1968)
Letters
  • En dépit des frontières linguistiques. Correspondance littéraire between Germaine Guèvremont and William Arthur Deacon (1946–1956). Edited by Mariel O'Neill-Karch, Editions David, 2007 ISBN 978-2-89597-071-2 .

Awards (selection)

  • 1945 Prix Duvernay for Le Survenant
  • 1946 Prix David for Le Survenant
  • 1946 Prix Sully-Olivier de Serres of the Académie française for Le Survenant
  • 1947 Marie-Didace medal from the Académie canadienne-française for Marie-Didace
  • 1948 member of the Académie canadienne-française
  • 1950 Governor General's Award for Literary Merit for The Outlander

Trivia

While Guèvremont stands for the roman du terroir in Canadian literary history , her cousin Claude-Henri Grignon (1894–1976) with his modernist novel Un Homme et son péché (1933) is an important representative of the anti-romans du terroir .

literature

  • Yvan G. Lepage, Germaine Guèvremont: la tentation autobiographique . Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa, 1998 ISBN 978-2-7603-0465-9 .
  • Roy Paul-Emile, Études littéraires: Germaine Guèvremont, Réjean Ducharme, Gabrielle Roy . Du Méridien, 1989 ISBN 978-2-920417-82-3 .
  • Pierre Girouard, Germaine Guèvremont et son oeuvre caché . Éditions De Neveurmagne, 1985 ISBN 2-920807-00-5 .
  • Jean Pierre Duquette, Germaine Guèvremont: une route, une maison . Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal, 1973 ISBN 978-0-8405-0220-9 .
  • Rita Leclerc-Gauthier, Germaine Guèvremont . Fides, 1963.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Germaine Guèvremont ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved September 30, 2019.
  2. ↑ a b c d Roman / Germaine Guèvremont at: chsth.com, accessed on September 14, 2015 (French).
  3. ↑ a b c d e Lee Skallerup, Germaine Guèvremont in the project Canadian French Writers at Athabasca University , accessed on September 14, 2015 (English)
  4. ↑ a b Le Survenant ( memento of March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at Radio Canada , accessed on September 14, 2015 (French).
  5. ^ A b Diane Sabourin: Le Survenant ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved September 30, 2019.
  6. ↑ Governor General's Literary Awards at: track0.com, accessed on September 14, 2015 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Guèvremont, Germaine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grignon, Germaine (maiden name); Nature (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Jerome
DATE OF DEATH August 21, 1968
Place of death Terrebonne (Québec)